The Importance of Meditation as an Entrepreneur

The Importance of Meditation as an Entrepreneur

Deadlines, Fast place, High Stake, being an entrepreneur means working in the midst of chaos.

As an entrepreneur, you need to learn to snap into focus, let go of slip-ups all while keeping a leveled head. It's all a balancing process. And believe it or not, the most practical skills for an entrepreneur are not developed in business school or field work, but on the meditation cushion.

“Creativity is not coming from the ‘working the brain’ and the ‘I will work hard and think about it’. It comes from this deep state of relaxation.” Ray Dalio

Billionaire Ray Dalio—someone who would make less money deliberating picking up a $100-dollar bill off the ground—takes at least 40 minutes of his busy schedule every day to meditate. Dalio understands the value of a meditation practice in developing the skills needed to function among top performers.

We all can be entrepreneurs. I recently picked up a marketing job with working with a team that inspired me to ponder my role as an influencer.

As an intentionally liver, we are all called to take control of our lives in our aspect of another which is why I think the operation and organization of one's life so synonymous to an entrepreneur running a business/

It makes no difference, we are all in the business of life. So you, as an aspiring student of life are no different whatsoever.

The limits in your personal and business lives are self-made. And meditation is the tool the help break down those barriers. Here’s are 3 essential traits of an entrepreneur that a meditation practice can help develop.

Entrepreneurs are focused.

You have the big idea to jump-start your business and are ready to start. All is left is the key component; you gotta put in the work. Hours upon hours of work is needed to launch your ideas and not any old work will do. Hours of purpose-driven focus with little interruptions are needed.

For the sake of brevity, I have only listed two. But several hundred empirical studies have been published on the cognitive benefits of meditation. It's good stuff.

Entrepreneurs are always creatively addressing problems.

Imagine a pinball machine inside your head with every thought, idea, or habit being another pinball up to play. Well, it’s easy to get so used to playing the same old game that we don’t notice the ball always taking the same track, resulting in the same outcome, and perhaps even the same losses.

“The world always makes sense; we just don’t understand it.”

-Adam Robinson

The routes of pinball thought are the models or system we use to make day to day decisions and they can become outdated. A lot of the times when we are constantly focused on a problem we lock ourselves in these patterns of thought and impair our abilities to think creatively.

Meditation opens up a diffused state of thought that allows various conventional wisdom to become innovatively applied for addressing the problems you are having running your business. I.e. The pinball machine will start taking different paths yielding innovative outcomes.

Educator, writer, and engineer, Professor Barbara Oakley writes about focused and diffused modes of thought in her book a mind for numbers. She discusses several strategies for activating a diffused mode of thought and meditation tops the list.

If you’re interested in the focused and diffuse mode of thought I recommend you check out her book.

Entrepreneurs do not crumble under pressure.

Your inbox is full, the old marketing strategy isn’t working, and your assistant is not getting back to you.

As an entrepreneur you get stressed, and becoming comfortable with unsettling feelings and states is part of the day job. How do top performing entrepreneurs do it?

By developing a sense of equanimity through meditation.

Equanimity is a state of balance even amongst a storm of emotions within us. The value of observing anger, frustration, sadness without becoming those feeling serves the monk and entrepreneur alike.

By observing how you feel internally without justifying it or explaining it, you open yourself up to sitting with discomfort. So when discomfort arises again, you have prepared yourself for the storm and are not shaken by the situation.

For entrepreneurs and business community alike, staying focused, creative and relaxed are pivotal to top performance. With a little mediation, you can start performing like some of the greatest minds in business do every day.

I treat every day as the best day of my life because no matter the praise, disappointment, obstacles, or success I know that I am doing everything that is in my control to live to the standards of my greatest self.